


Jars

by stolashoots



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Death, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 02:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9051403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stolashoots/pseuds/stolashoots
Summary: The souls of the dead haunt Kaito.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reishiin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reishiin/gifts).



> Hey! This is written in dedication to Rei~ Merry Christmas!!

The flight back to the Tower is long and cold. The wind whistles and snaps at Kaito’s clothes, drowning out Orbital 7’s mechanical chatter about the unexpected events that have taken place. Kato doesn’t want to hear Orbital 7’s voice anyway, the robot lacks true empathy and is incapable of feeling the same heavy burden pressing down on Kaito’s shoulders. Death is meaningless to something that cannot die like humans do.

Perception of death is dependent upon the eyes of the beholder, but there would be very few who wouldn’t consider Kaito a murderer if they knew the acts he has committed. While his victims are still breathing and have a heartbeat, he has stolen the most important thing to them: their souls. Without their souls, they will never experience emotion, never be able to make decisions for themselves, never become anything other than a memory of their previous selves.

Kaito doesn’t even have the decency to end their now empty existence. After forcibly ripping their souls from their body, he can’t stand to spend another second in their presence. His victims always have wide, accusing eyes that pierce through Kaito to judge him for his sins. Kaito cannot handle the guilt of his actions because if he spends even one single moment trying to process what he has done to others, all of him mental walls will crumble and he’ll have to accept the monster he has become.

He fled after dealing with the last Numbers holder, the Shark kid. Kaito didn’t pause to figure out why Shark hadn’t been infected with the taint of the Numbers, nor was he able to extract a Numbers card from him despite Orbital 7’s intel.

It doesn’t matter, he was after the Key anyway, and while the Shark boy tried to protect it, he was unsuccessful. The Key is tucked away in Orbital 7’s storage box where it will be safely kept until Kaito is prepared to fight the being held inside it. Taking Shark’s soul was just a precaution; even though it turns out he wasn’t holding a Numbers card, this way he won’t be able to get in Kaito’s way anymore.

This is all for Haruto’s sake. If Kaito has to hurt seemingly innocent children to save his little brother, then nothing will hold him back.

Landing at the Tower is uneventful. The hallways are dead silent, cameras at every corner watching the emptiness. “Orbital 7,” Kaito says, his voice too loud as it slices through the quiet, “Return to the lab and begin analyzing the Key. I want a report ready once I return.”

“Mr. Kaito, where will you be go-“ Orbital 7 asks, faltering when Kaito shoots it a glare. “-ing? Apologies, Mr. Kaito. I will begin analyzing the Emperor’s Key now.” Orbital 7 droops as if to show shame and rolls itself out of sight. Perhaps Kaito was being too harsh to the robot, but Kaito never has the patience to bother with it after a hunt.

Kaito turns and heads to his room. Shark’s soul still weighs heavily on his mind and he needs to contain it before it breaks free and returns to its vessel. His room is not far from his lab, purposefully so that he can afford to sleep in a real bed instead of his lab chair and not risk missing anything important. Kaito doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like the white-beige walls, doesn’t like the bookshelf and pictures hanging from the walls as though this is a real home, doesn’t like how far away he is from Haruto when he’s in it. To him, it’s always been just a room with an empty bed in it, not something that brings him warmth or protection.

He uses it anyway because he can’t stand to store the stolen souls inside the lab. Once Orbital 7 extracts the Numbers cards out of the soul, he can’t just let it free so his victims can report what happened to them to the authorities. No, Kaito must keep every last soul he’s ever taken.

He imagines it to be a form of punishment, as well as a responsibility he has to follow through if he intends to live with what he’s done.  He can’t release the souls and can’t bring himself to simply destroy them, so he has taken it upon himself to keep them safe.

Kaito turns on the lights to his room, illuminating his bed, the pictures drawn in crayons crudely taped to the walls, and the bookshelves void of books and instead filled with rows and rows of glass jars. Softly glowing orbs, now difficult to see with the artificial light shining from above, float inside the jars. There is twenty-six of them in total, some large to the point where they press against the glass, some no bigger than the size of Kaito’s pinky finger.

There’s an empty jar already prepared on his bedside table. The original plan was to take Yuma’s Numbers and his soul, but there will be plenty of time to deal with him later. For now, Kaito activates the Photon Change and pulls out Shark’s soul.

It’s a deep, royal purple color, pulsing and shuddering in Kaito’s hands. Kaito slides it into the glass jar and twists the top back on. The glowing soul almost seems angry, but of course that can’t be true. A soul without a host is nothing more than floating energy, it can’t feel or express emotion. While in this jar, it’s no more than a nightlight.

Kaito sets it back down on his nightstand, turns his back to it, and flicks down the light switch. Even without the artificial light, the room still glows faint reds, greens, yellows, browns, and _purples_ of the souls captured and hidden stories above the ground in this fake Tower of Babel.

Looking back at the jars, the heaviness returns to his body, pressing down on him and making him feel ages older than he truly is. The souls don’t belong here, locked up to be forgotten until the time is right for them to be used. In the coming months, their physical, human vessels will wither away, and so the flames of the souls will be snuffed out. Including Shark’s, the boy who was only trying to protect his friend.

Kaito can only hope that, once Haruto learns the full truth, he’ll forgive Kaito for the innocents he struck down. There’s no going back.

-

_And as he stands before Don Thousand, his physical body miles and miles away on the moon, Kaito only has his fragile soul left. He could turn back now, return to Haruto and his father and try to protect them from the Chaos infecting the Earth. It would be no use, he knows, but it would be so easy to run and hide and pray that this all ends._

_It would be so easy to finally take a break from the suffocating responsibility and let someone else become the hero._

_Kaito stands between Yuma and Nasch, the newest members of his strange family. Now, in this state of not alive yet not truly dead, he can see the glow of Nasch and Yuma, the purples and reds that stream out from their bodies to create a protective aura._

_There’s no going back because to turn away now would be to abandon the people who have helped Kaito save himself._


End file.
